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A History of Broken Promises

Just three years ago this month, the Capitol was
filled with self-congratulation about the passage of the blueprint
of President Bush’s first budget. House Budget Chairman Jim Nussle
proclaimed the passage of the fiscal 2002 budget resolution a
“victory,” and publicly announced it was a plan that “curb[s]
government spending.” Senator Trent Lott called it a “first step in
a process that will lead to responsible government [and] fiscal
restraint.” The future looked bright for fiscal conservatives.

What happened? Republicans in Congress simply could not resist
the temptation to break their own promises of spending restraint.
Indeed, the history of the GOP’s broken promises is instructive,
and doesn’t bode well for the fate of the current budget blueprint
being debated in Congress.

Every year, the budget resolution creates spending “caps” that
are supposed to set the upper limit on discretionary spending.
So-called “mandatory” programs — which make up over 60 percent of
the federal budget and include programs like Social Security and
Medicare — are not subject to the caps.

Besides, the discretionary caps are often regarded as spending
floors instead of ceilings. Comparing the originally agreed-upon
caps to final spending numbers from the White House, it’s easy to
see that Congress busted the 2002 cap by $51 billion and the 2003
cap by $44 billion. According to preliminary estimates, the
original 2004 cap could be exceeded by $47 billion by the end of
this year.

The entire spending spree cannot be blamed on increased defense
spending. About 62 percent of the budget busting is due to
increased defense discretionary spending between 2001 and 2003. The
remaining 38 percent is due to domestic spending bloat.

Perhaps the worst part is that the so-called “caps” were hardly
keeping Congress leashed to an austere budget in the first place.
In fact, the caps go up in each new budget resolution. This problem
has persisted for at least the past five years under the GOP
Congress, before the presidency of George W. Bush and also before
September 11. If the limits in each budget resolution between 1999
and 2003 had been maintained, discretionary spending would have
grown by 43 percent. Instead, actual discretionary spending grew by
50 percent. The 7-percentage point difference amounts to a grand
total of $183 billion in money that Congress promised it would not
spend.

The increases in discretionary spending are the largest since
the late 1960s. If fiscal conservatives today lament that
modern-day Republicans are acting more like pre-Reagan Democrats,
they’re right.

There are many explanations for how the budget promises were
broken. Foremost is that overturning the budget caps is relatively
easy; all that is needed in the Senate is a three-fifths majority
or a simple majority in the House. If there’s a bipartisan
consensus about anything on Capitol Hill today, it’s about the
desire to spend more taxpayer money.

In the House, waiving the caps for appropriations bills is a
common occurrence. Just last year, the budget rules were waived for
the appropriations bills of the Department of Homeland Security,
the Department of Interior, the Defense construction bill, the
Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration,
and—perhaps not surprisingly—the bill funding the operations of
the U.S. Congress. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the current
version of the budget resolution that would make it harder to
ignore the rules again this year.

So-called “emergency spending” is one of the biggest culprits of
the budget bloat. This type of spending is not subject to the caps,
which creates a convenient loophole for big spenders. The emergency
distinction has been abused dramatically in the last few years —
for instance, in the 2000 budget the constitutionally mandated
decennial Census was treated as an unexpected expense. Between 1999
and 2002, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Congress
spent $154 billion on so-called “emergencies,” only a fraction of
which can honestly be worthy of the distinction.

There are plenty of changes that need to be made to the budget
process. In the meantime, the GOP Congress should do more than make
hollow promises. If a budget blueprint finally passes this month,
congressional leaders will sing the praises of its promised budget
restraint. But if past actions are any indication, there is little
to suggest that they will keep their word.